Contents
The contents section will sometimes include a listing of the contents of
the periodical's advertisement section. Often one or more gatherings of
advertisements are printed and bound with the number or bound volumes,
and headed with the title of the periodical and the word "advertiser"; such
gatherings may precede or follow the text. The distinction between the
advertisements and the rest of the periodical's contents was sometimes
deliberately blurred, provoking complaints such as the following in the
Printing Times:
We protest against the extent to which advertiser's bills are thrust upon
us this year in several of the Annuals. In
All the Year Round, one firm
has pretty well nauseated us by inserting a bill between almost every four
pages of the journal, but the most objectionable form of the nuisance is that
allowed by Messrs. Routledge. The first story in the Annual published by
these gentlemen is apparently "Ned Rodney's Courtship," and the
unsuspecting reader is led on about a couple of pages before he finds that he
has been mistaken, and that he is reading
not the Annual, but one of a
certain popular firm's exceedingly ingenious effusions touching the Sewing
Machines they have for disposal.
[30]
In books, advertisements, even if they are part of the sheets, are rarely
positioned or labeled as if they are continuous with the rest of the text; in
periodicals, however, a special effort is sometimes made to link the
advertisements with the rest of the periodical's contents. Because of this, it is
important to look for evidence (such as differences in paper stock) that might
indicate whether the advertiser is part of the sheets of the periodical.
The contents section of the description is likely to pose practical
problems when a periodical contains numerous separate articles,
advertisements, and illustrations on each page. The level of detail necessary
in a transcription of contents will depend on several factors. If the periodical
has been indexed, short titles of indexed articles are sufficient; if not, the
transcription will be much more useful to potential readers if full titles and
authors' names are included. One way to do this is to quote the full title; if
the article is signed, a lower-case "s" and the author's name as given in the
periodical appear in parentheses; if the author's name is given on a
subsequent page, that page number is given. Thus
on 8 'ENGLISH PROJECTILES.' (s W. Bridges Adams 10)
indicates that the essay "English Projectiles" begins on page 8 and is signed
with the name "W. Bridges Adams" on page 10.
In cases where space will not permit any but the most abbreviated listing
of contents, the bibliographer can provide the title of the first item on the
page (that is, the item that appears in the upper left corner), the last item
(that which appears in the lower right corner), and the total number of items
per page (specifying whether advertisements are included in the total), as in
the following example:
95 ads headed 'DRAWINGS AND ENGRAVINGS.' 5 titles, "M. M.
Rodin, Fantin-Latour, and Legros" → "A Book of Images"
Certain features of the periodical's contents, such as editorial statements,
advertisements for the periodical, announcements of special supplements, etc.
should always be specifically identified in the contents and transcribed:
99 ad headed 'THEOLOGY.' 2 titles "A Series of XVIII. facsimiles of
MSS. of the Hebrew Bible" → "The Soul of the Sermon" also ad for
'"THE DOME."' partial transcription: "A Quarterly. One Hundred pages,
Pott 4to, boards. Price is. net, or 5s. per annum, post
free. *** Each number of The Dome contains about twenty
examples of Music, Architecture, Literature, Drawing, Painting, and
Engraving, including several Coloured Plates.'
If a separate listing of illustrations is not provided, and when illustrations are
too numerous to be individually identified, the number of illustrations per
page can be counted and given in parentheses after each page number.
As in the case of illustrations (discussed below), typographical features
of the contents may be of separate interest to readers of the description, and
for that reason may be presented either in a note following the listing of
contents or in the section on typography. Typographical patterns, such as a
larger font used for titles and bylines, or the characteristic placement of a rule
or ornament between features, can be listed and measurements given.
